


falling for daisy

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Phil Coulson, Coulson thinks way too much, Cunnilingus, Director Daisy Johnson, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Introspection, Love Confessions, Romance, not Tony Stark friendly lmao, post-season 3, season 4-7 don't exist in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25615489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Phil Coulson falls for his boss.(Post-season 3 unspecified future. Seasons 4-7 do not exist in this fic.)
Relationships: Phil Coulson/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 50





	falling for daisy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RowboatCop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/gifts), [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts), [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



> I was looking through some file with unfinished ideas for Cousy fic and I really felt like writing down this one. Maybe I'm feeling nostalgic and there will be more Cousy fic set around seasons 1-3 in the future, who knows.

He’s falling in love with the Director of SHIELD, he realizes, and frankly it’s puzzling.

First of all because he has known her for years.

Second, because _it’s Daisy_.

+++

The thing is, Phil Coulson doesn’t do unrequited love. 

He might have done unrequited _crushes_ once upon a time, when he was very young and very stupid, crushing on the girl next door or the straight boys in his baseball team (but then again this was Manitowoc, which boy _wasn’t_ straight?) and then on virtually all the teachers in his first year at SHIELD Academy. Crushes, that was it. But he is not the kind to fall hopelessly and seriously in love when he knows there’s no chance of it paying out. He doesn’t think it’s romantic or noble, the pining. And he is not egotistic enough to think his feelings alone are worth pondering over. 

It makes him feel self-centered, almost ashamed, when he keeps thinking about it — this new, ridiculous thing seemingly out of nowhere — and it doesn’t pass quickly, as he thought it would.

It’s there, every time he looks at Daisy’s face, this inconvenient foolish word stuck right in his throat, and it’s a problem, because these days Coulson is used to seeing her face every single day. Seeing her face every day is sort of his job now.

It makes him wary of his own behavior around Daisy, or _more_ wary — he has always been restrained with her, he knows, but this is something else. 

This is new.

He keeps second-guessing everything he says, everything he does, even the way he looks at her. And Daisy, who is as observing as he is, and possibly twice as empathic (and sometimes downright telepathic), is bound to notice his awkwardness, even if she could never suspect the source.

“Okay, spill it, what did I do?” she asks, all of the sudden, interrupting their conversation on the day’s mission. Her face scrunches in a familiar soft panic.

It hurts her to see that, even after all these years of friendship, Daisy’s first instinct is to think she did something wrong whenever he is acting strange around her, rather than assume it’s Coulson’s issue. Not exactly that the world revolves around her, but she believes all the bad things in it do. 

But she did nothing wrong — unless you count existing in an state of perfect Daisy-ness that… no, he has to stop that line of thought now. Useless, dangerous.

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

That wasn’t the question she asked and one would do to know better than assume anything can escape Daisy’s attention. The panic seeps into a worry and the expressiveness of a raised eyebrow and the mechanics of Daisy coming up with a theory and once she settles on one she makes an apologetic gesture with her left hand.

“I know it’s been hectic around here and I’ve been grilling you pretty hard with this sub-director deal, sorry about that,” she tells Coulson. “Am I putting too much on your plate already? You can say, you know. It’s fine if you are tired of me bossing you around. Do you need a few days off?”

She’s ranting. Coulson smiles blandly, and shakes his head. _Sub-director_ is not really a position that existed before Daisy took over SHIELD, but he accepted gladly, if only to soothe Daisy’s fears that she was usurping his place somehow. To let her know he was okay receiving orders from her. This is what he always wanted, he had reminded her, he was the first to put the option on the table, a couple of years ago, but he was also glad to act as a safety net for her, if she needed it. And someone to talk to. He knows first hand how lonely the job can get. He doesn’t want that for Daisy.

But he is not entirely ego-centric - he knows Daisy worries about power being concentrated in just one person, that person being her, this is why she was set on splitting the role. She means to dilute the authority of the Director on purpose and Coulson, if only because he remembers his own failings, can also help with that. He suspects she also means to dilute it for good, no more Directors, somewhere down the line, though she keeps that card very close to her for now.

“Thank you but it’s not that,” he rejects her offer, with an offended frown that she would think he couldn’t handle _too much on his plate_ , then he remembers it was him acting suspicious which prompted the idea. “I’m just distracted this morning.”

She nods, somewhat skeptical, but not pushing for the cause of his distraction, going back to the business of the day. She still isn’t showing any cracks in her aloof Director mask. She is still not leaning on him too hard, despite what she says. And she hasn't gone to him with any doubts yet.

+++

But it’s not just that morning, Coulson knows.

This will continue to happen until he can get this silly, useless idea out of his head.

Awareness makes it hard not to act awkward. Sometimes he catches himself wondering if anything has changed at all - he catches himself looking at Daisy, trying to detect some minutiae difference in her. If there is something new in her that precipitated Coulson to… this.

It’s not that their relationship has changed that much once Daisy decided to take up the role of Director of the new, very much changed, very much illegal, SHIELD. Which was surprising. Coulson hadn’t expected the change to feel so natural to their current dynamic. A dynamic which had drastically changed but also stayed very much the same since they first met. He still liked propping Daisy up every chance he had, and Daisy strangely has always done the same, even when she was a fresh-faced recruit and Coulson had over 20 years of experience in SHIELD. She always seems to think she has to reciprocate.

That hasn’t really changed at all.

Coulson has always been willing to listen to her theories and accept her suggestions for action — in a way that instinct has saved his life many times, he thinks since the first mission she accompanied him on. But now for the first time Daisy is in a position where she _officially_ can order Coulson what to do, where Coulson has to _officially_ listen to what she has to say.

Maybe he can crack the mystery this way (maybe Daisy has rubbed off of him all these years, because he feels the itch to find the exploit here, figure out the problem). That now Daisy has authority over him — he has always liked that. Not being her boss anymore probably helps to soothe the ethical problems of falling in love with her. Would he had felt this way sooner, had he stopped being Daisy’s boss earlier?

He also wonders if her not being a young person anymore has rendered the age difference more or less irrelevant. It was always irrelevant to Coulson when they were friends — hopefully in a way that wasn’t inappropriate when they first met, but to the point where he feels he has often put Daisy in danger because he struggled to remember how young she was. 

Even though the notion is still ridiculous, it _feels_ slightly less ridiculous now that she is in her 30s.

Ever since the first time they met Daisy never behaved towards him with any reserve or distance because of who he was, she was always on the level to him, respectful but straightforward. When Coulson came back from the dead after the Battle of New York everybody was more or less treading on eggshells in front of him. Daisy talked to him like he was a person, she was confrontational and she was teasing, she didn’t care that he was a SHIELD agent or their team’s leader. It’s one of the reasons he made him offer her a place in the Bus in the first time. Perhaps it was that he liked how Daisy talked to him, giving him the illusion that they could have been just friends, had they met out in the real world. 

Was that why he had had such a hard time over the years, remembering how young Daisy was, pushing all that responsibility onto her? Was it all selfishness and Coulson had just called it _faith in Daisy_? He had always meant to give her confidence and support her, but maybe he had pushed too much. And Coulson had never wanted to treat her like she was too inexperienced or too naive for the mission, like she didn’t know any better, because he suspected (Daisy never talked about these things) she had had enough of being underestimated and talked down to in her own life before SHIELD. And it wasn’t like SHIELD hadn’t asked even more adult responsibilities from people younger than Daisy. Coulson would know, he had once been one of those people.

The more he keeps running all these reasons (excuses?) in his calculations the less sense everything makes. The longer he stays in his own head, the less he knows what to actually do about this new state of his. And _state_ is a good way to describe it.

He knows avoiding her would do nothing to solve the issue. Might aggravate it in any case because… historically… Since when being apart from Daisy has lessened his feelings for her? Coulson reflects rather wistfully.

Following her, looking for her, even chasing her, has been such a big part of his life the last few years, it’s not a switch Coulson can turn on and off at will. And this morning it feels strange that she is nowhere to be found. Not that there is any pressing need for it; she hasn’t disappeared because no one has exactly tried to find her. Coulson would worry, if they had tried to get her on the comms and failed. But it’s still unnerving that they haven’t passed each other in the hallways all morning. That he hasn’t seen her in her office when he risked a peek.

Then Coulson thinks back on yesterday’s mission, which wasn’t exactly dangerous, but SHIELD working out of mainly new recruits right now meant that everything is extra stressful for people like him and Daisy. He himself woke up with a soreness in his shoulders and neck that only comes from being in tension for too long, watching over subordinates in a mission. The volatile if necessary mix of human and Inhuman talent in the new agents means that Daisy felt that same tension but double.

Coulson wanders idly through the base, unconsciously trying to get a glimpse of Daisy, just to know she is okay — honestly, he is not thinking about _the other thing_ , he’s too busy concerned she might need help. Some half-buried thought in the back of his head directs him to the garage, where he spots a particularly tempting-looking SUV in a corner.

When he opens one of the back doors he is surprised at how unsurprised he is that he picked the correct one, among all of them, the one with Daisy slouched on the back seat, a tablet in her lap. They exchange a look (Daisy rolling her eyes slightly at being caught) and Coulson gets in, closing the door again after.

He sits besides her and for a moment he doesn’t talk.

Daisy has her eyes staring at some invisible dot on the roof of the car. Her mouth and her shoulders look tense. Coulson wants to say something helpful, other than the obvious.

“Are you okay?” he says the obvious.

She doesn’t look at him just yet.

“Yes, of course. Just checking the… coziness of our new SUVs.”

“Very important.”

“In case — “

“In case some agent is in need of me-time,” Coulson fills in.

Daisy raises an eyebrow, turning to look at him, as if touched that he remembers at all.

Of course he does, and he marvels at the _easiness_ of it all, interacting with Daisy back then without this silly thing in his head and his heart. Yes, there was restraint and carefulness even in the first days of her presence in his world, but it was easy too. It had felt effortless, back when everything else in Coulson’s life, since he had been back from the dead, felt like an uphill battle. It had made Daisy different to him.

Right now, with her, everything feels like trepidation, like marvelling at her existence. Not an uphill battle, never that. But not easy, either. 

But that’s his problem, Coulson decides. He needs to get out of his head and do what he always does, try to help Daisy. Starting with why she’s really hiding from her own secret organization in the back of an SUV.

“Does the Director need her me-time?” he asks, experimentally. 

She makes a throaty “ _Ha!_ ” noise as reply.

“Does the Director get me-time? Did you?”

“No,” Coulson tells her. He might have done a better job of it if he had - but Daisy would only protest if he told her that.

Despite her words Daisy seems in no rush to get out of the car.

She is not good at asking for help, Coulson ponders with fondness, with a bit of hypocritical chiding, but keeps that to himself. He suddenly understands the frustration Daisy must have felt many times when he was in charge of everything. He tries to remember the things Daisy did back then to make him feel better — but he also remembers all those times he wouldn’t even let her try. And Daisy is stubborn but not Coulson’s brand of stubborn (thankfully) so maybe if he tries hard enough he will be able to help this time around.

And it feels good to be out of his own head like this, his own annoying fixation with what his feelings mean or don’t.

Focus on Daisy, what she needs from him, not all the things he would want to give her instead.

“I think this is cozy enough,” he declares of the backseat.

Daisy makes a gesture as if about to input some data on her tablet. She’s smiling.

“It gets the A.C. stamp of approval?”

Something clicks inside him upon hearing his old nickname. And he realizes - it’s _still easy_ , being with Daisy, connecting with her. Even if it’s just hiding with her in the back of an SUV when the world gets to be too much. She’s still the most effortless thing in his world.

“Yeah, it does.”

+++

They are in one of the new Quinjets. These are a bit more rudimentary than the old ones, but it has been hard building the operation from scratch without help for official agencies, which Daisy refused again and again. She wouldn’t accept one screw, one metal panel, from the US government.

Someone suggested private contractors, maybe Stark? and Daisy made a grimace with her back turned to them, a grimace they couldn’t see, that Coulson only caught half of. Daisy would rather employ blueprint hackers, she’d rather straight up steal the tech, than compromise SHIELD by getting in business with either the government or the private sector, and Coulson knew what she eventually came to think of Tony Stark, specifically.

_I used to like Stark_ , he thought of saying that day. And he wondered how that had been possible. So many things in his old life seemed impossible after meeting Daisy — like paying blind loyalty to SHIELD, instead of paying blind loyalty to Daisy, and he wonders if this is this love, too, this new thing, this infatuation-shaped buzz under his skin every time he talks to Daisy or thinks about Daisy or remembers something funny or kind or smart or kind she’d said, hours after she’s said it.

As for no using government tech — once upon a time Coulson would have thought Daisy was being excessively political but the truth is, if they are to protect Inhumans and gain their trust, they can’t have any ties to a government that keeps legislating against their existence.

So the new Quinjets are more rudimentary, though serviceable, and Coulson likes the feeling of living under the radar, even outside of legality. 

They are still doing test rides, though, and the pilots are mostly new recruits. It’s not exactly dangerous, but the trips are not smooth yet. Daisy wants speed and stealth over anything else, over precision, which means the trials end up being more bumpy than Coulson had prepared himself for.

A bumpy ride, indeed.

At some point the plane drops unexpectedly and Coulson feels himself losing footing and falling, then he feels himself being caught by strong and timely hands. Hands that don’t hesitate to catch him. He finds Daisy’s eyes very close to him, gaze pinned on him. The quinjet is still struggling to even out the turbulence, but Coulson is not longer falling.

(Or he is, depending on how you see it)

She seems a bit amused at his rookie-style misstep, or maybe at Coulson’s self-accusing frown.

“Got you,” Daisy says, pushing him to an upright position immediately, but keeping her hands on his chest and hip until she is completely sure Coulson has regained his balance. She is so solid, looking like those arms are strong enough to carry the weight of the whole world on her own. Which, well, Coulson figures that is more than just a corny metaphor in his romance-addled brain.

She then shouts some light admonishment to the young pilot about not being so harsh maneuvering but Coulson, in a daze, doesn’t register the exact words. Her hands fall away from his body while she has her head turned away from him. 

It doesn’t feel like someone had flipped a switched. That would mean he hadn’t been seeing Daisy clearly until now. He has always seen her clearly. It feels more like Coulson wasn’t seeing himself that clearly after all.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Daisy replies. “That’s what the boss is for.”

Coulson returns her smile; it’s oddly endearing that she still has to qualify her position of power by constantly joking about it, as if to make it sound less serious. The jokes are… not good. Coulson likes them anyway. 

“Is it? I don’t remember it being in the job description,” he teases back.

“No, you don’t? But I do remember you catching me in those arms of yours a few times when I was a lowly agent…”

He knows she’s just joking. She’s got that right but Coulson can’t believe those were particularly memorable moments for her — they were painful, if anything, it’s incredible enough that she remembers Coulson’s presence in them at all. That she can joke about them at all.

+++

Daisy’s body is constantly changing. That he notices is not exactly new, he has been watching her since she joined SHIELD as a mere consultant, he has watched her transform herself since the days she still said “bang!” when she pulled the trigger of a gun.

There was a time when Coulson was obsessed with tracing the changes in her body; tortured by the idea of what he himself did to that body when he tried to save her life, fearful that any change was an indication that she was about to go the same fatal road as him, that she would start carving those symbols too. 

Then watching her change meant watching her in pain, meant being witness to Daisy breaking all the bones in her hands to protect the world from her own strength. It meant being scared of her, but not because of what she might do to others, but what she might do to herself.

At some point watching her became a habit out of fear.

But all that is gone now, Coulson reminds himself as he walks into the gym to find his Director going on a late evening round against their heaviest punching bag.

“Hey,” she greets him without stopping her attacks. “Getting a bit of arm work now I finally have a minute,” she explains.

“I see.”

He comes closer; Daisy doesn’t immediately ask why he is down here, if there are urgent business she has to take care of. There is some business she has to take care of, but nothing urgent. And she is right about not having much free time to do this these past few weeks. Even her sacrosanct early morning training has had to take a backseat to the hectic agenda of the last month. It doesn’t have to do with her new role, not entirely — just the world being very crappy about Inhumans once more. One of the reasons why it’s a good idea to have an Inhuman leading SHIELD this time around.

Right now she is torturing the poor punching bag like she is trying to make up for the lost time. Coulson gets it — he’s making a mental note to go down the shooting range after dinner, pushed by Daisy’s discipline. He’s also been clocking more hours than usual this year, trying to keep his skills sharp now that he is on the field as a subordinate again. Now that he is on the field more often than he’s been the last couple of years.

Between punches Daisy draws her hand over her left elbow, a look of concentration like she is trying to figure something out. Coulson wonders if she got hurt in the last mission and he didn’t realize, but the next punch solves the mystery: Daisy was just trying to correct her stance, her left side dropping a bit sooner than it should.

Coulson smiles, impressed, at that. Having superpowers would be a perfect excuse to get lazy about the perfect stance but Daisy isn’t. Even so, it feels a bit unfair to be watching her like this, now that he thinks he is in love with her. Like he is taking advantage of having watched her like this a hundred times without ulterior motives. It’s innocent enough (his mind won’t go further than thinking how impressive and superhero-like she looks right now) but it’s a bit _less innocent_ than before.

Problem is, Daisy also catches him smiling.

“What?”

“Nothing, just… You have a great form,” he says, gesturing towards the punching bag.

Daisy widens her eyes and blinks at him, slowly.

He realizes, a moment too late, the tone he accidentally used.

“Careful, Agent Coulson, that sounded a bit flirty,” she says, clicking her tongue with mock severity. “What would HR say?”

Coulson wonders what is worse: that he said that to his Director, or _to Daisy_.

That they don’t even have HR — they are _outlaws_ once more, and it feels like it — seems of no consequence. Though he should probably bring that up in their next meeting. Outlaws or not, they should find a way to protect their agents from the more mundane pitfalls of the job. He knows what Daisy is going to say about that and Coulson guesses if he had to put money on which Director of SHIELD would be the first to let her agents unionize… Well, he almost gets distracted by that, enough that it takes him a beat to apologize for his unprofessional comment.

“No, I didn’t mean — “

He did, of course.

Or he didn’t, but he did.

These days he can’t tell the difference.

Daisy laughs.

Genuinely and her shoulders shake with amusement.

“No, I know, I know, _your face_ ” she tells him, waving him to relax, sweat rolling down her forearms as she moves her hands defensively. “But a girl can dream, uh?”

It doesn’t sound like she is mocking him, which, of course, Daisy wouldn’t. But it doesn’t exactly sound like a joke either.

She gets into position again, like what she’s just said is no big deal, her shoulders in tension to release a punch, the muscles straight with the precision of strings in a beautiful musical instrument.

“So, are you going to help me out with this?” she asks. Coulson tilts his head to one side, confused. “Hold the bag?”

“Of course.”

He almost forgets what he came into this room to tell her. He’ll tell her later, he thinks, grabbing the punching bag as securely as he knows how to. It’s almost nostalgic, he used to do this a lot in the Academy.

The first punch is hard, but Coulson has no trouble doing his part, though he feels the awakening jolt of her strength. It’s exciting, being the recipient of the connection from her fist, travelling through the punching bag, and being absorbed by his body. He smiles at her, silently challenging her to try harder. He’d want to feel that again, more of it.

She frowns, looking frustrated at his resilience. Like she was somehow hoping she’d throw him off balance. Coulson smiles to himself at that plan being thwarted. She shouldn’t underestimate him.

Daisy punches harder next time. Coulson falters a little but ultimately holds on both to the punching bag and his balance on the mat. Daisy lifts an eyebrow, looks openly impressed. Was he trying to impress her? Has he _been_ trying to impress her all these years? Coulson doesn’t know. He is not sure what intentions earlier versions of himself really had.

“You’re good,” she tells him.

“One of the advantages of being one of the shortest SHIELD recruits in my year,” Coulson says. “Low center of gravity. They just couldn’t knock me out.”

Daisy smiles, amused at his admission, and specially after Coulson’s stumble in the Quinjet the other day. Her smile makes Coulson think of the men Daisy has been in love with, all of them unusually tall, _annoyingly tall_ , towering over her like threats. Jealousy is not a feeling he is comfortable with anymore than he is comfortable with unrequited love — but Coulson starts discovering traces in retrospect. Hell, he once left Daisy’s boyfriend stranded in Hong Kong out of sheer pettiness. That pettiness seems quite suspect now. After all, Mr Lydon was one good head taller than him.

+++

The mission ( _her_ mission, he thinks bitterly) has been, in the most technical sense, a success, but there are scattered troops still scrambling for revenge, and he and Daisy still need someone to come extract them out of here.

And then there is the blood.

A scratch, she would say — and it is, a graze — but still. She got shot. And there’s the fact that it could have been so much worse.

“Aren’t you glad I insisted not to let you go at it alone?” he says. He can hear his own voice, ugly with anger, through his teeth. 

He keeps thinking what would have happened if Daisy had gone through with her original plan, and faced this mission alone.

“I didn’t want to — “

“Involve SHIELD?” Coulson finishes, for he knows Daisy’s reasoning well. Too well. It makes him clench his jaw. “Well, we are involved. This is about Inhumans, so we are involved. And you are our leader, so we are involved.”

Daisy has no problem mobilizing all the organization’s resources to push back against threats to all Inhumans, but as soon as it’s someone’s personal vendetta against her she wants to go at it alone. 

And there is a long list of psychos out there with a personal vendetta against _Quake_.

Coulson lifts his head and watches the impression his harsh tone has made on Daisy’s face. He immediately regrets it. It’s not like he doesn’t know these tendencies of hers doesn’t come from Daisy’s biggest fear: being the cause of others getting hurt. It’s not like his reasoning was always flawless when he first became Director of SHIELD (all the lies, for one). He doesn’t want to be a hypocrite just because seeing her get hurt always shakes him.

“Sorry about that,” he mutters, going back to the task at hand, as Daisy’s blood starts to congeal around his fingers.

He has stopped the bleeding quite quickly, and bandaged her thigh, and now they just have to stay put and relatively quiet until Mike comes for them with the extraction team. 

“It’s not the first time I get shot, you know?” she says, gently, an amused expression about Coulson’s worry. “You are very exaggerated. And you are very good at patching me up. Even if it’s just a scratch.”

The way she says _very good_ , it’s very much the tone of a superior encouraging a subordinate and Coulson knows she can’t help herself, kindness pours out of every pore of her being, he only wishes she could have been put in charge of everything sooner. Her kindness has always shocked him, but it’s different kind of longing now that he’s fallen for her.

“I’m the one who should apologize,” Daisy adds, now earnestly serious. “I know I shouldn’t have left the base alone. I knew it was wrong when I did it. Thanks for coming after me.”

“Of course,” he says, the adrenaline of the confrontation rendering him a little too honest, his tongue loose. “I always will.”

Daisy softens her expression, like he has said the right thing. 

“Yeah, I’m beginning to get that about you,” she replies. 

Sounds like some kind of permission to keep following her into danger.

It’s probably all Coulson has ever wanted.

And the rest is inconsequential. 

Some stupid unrequited love. Who cares? As long as he gets to be by her side, to be part of what she is trying to do, he is satisfied. He’d been pretty foolish to stress over such a small thing. He smiles to himself, like he’s come to a secret resolution.

“But I am sorry, I didn’t mean to get…” Coulson gestures to her earlier words. “ _Exaggerated_ about the mission.”

He worries she might think he was being unprofessional or doubting her capacities. He still hates that she went off on her own, but he didn’t mean to be unprofessional about it. 

Daisy shakes her head.

“You don’t like it when I get shot,” she points out. “That is kind of nice.”

He is a bit horrified, and must look like it.

“I _more than don’t like it_ when you get shot,” he says. “Much more than.”

It’s a grammatical nightmare, Coulson knows, but Daisy must be told.

She looks awkward. “It was a stupid joke,” she tells him. “It was just… Of course I know.”

They fall into a strained silence as Coulson finishes patching her up. The comms tell him the team is closing in on them, but he wishes they’d be faster. He knows Daisy is not in danger, but he’d be happier when she is resting in medbay with some painkillers in her system.

Another layer of bandages and her leg has already stopped bleeding. Almost immediately color flows back to Daisy’s face. Coulson looks back at his work with some kind of pride, then at Daisy’s eyes again to check she is feeling better. This is all he ever wanted as well. For her to be safe, alive. 

“Coulson?” she says.

“Yes?” he replies on autopilot, not because he’s really listening.

She doesn’t say anything else and for a moment he doesn’t notice, focused on her leg. Then he raises his head and finds an odd expression on Daisy’s face. He’s seen it before; it’s the expression she has when at a computer, trying to figure out a particularly difficult exploit. Something urgent and delicate working behind her eyes.

“Did you mean what you said?” Coulson asks all of the sudden, not knowing exactly what about Daisy’s expression prompts his curiosity.

His recklessness.

“When I said what?” she asks.

“In the gym. When you said a girl can dream?” Coulson tells her.

Daisy looks like an animal caught in the headlights, and Coulson is sure he’s made the wrong move here. And Daisy’s been shot — it’s not like she can walk away if he puts her in an uncomfortable position.

“Sorry, I — shouldn’t have mentioned it.“

“Don’t you know already?” she asks him, her brow in a confused frown.

“What?”

She blinks and does a thing with her eyes that make them seem bigger and brighter, her eyelashes longer.

“That you’re the man of my dreams,” she tells him. She lets out a little sigh. “You’ve always been.”

Such an odd, old-fashioned way of putting it, and Coulson gapes, unable to believe it. Daisy takes his open mouth as an invitation to lean towards him and press her lips against him. Coulson moans at the touch, forgetting where he is for a moment, forgetting the bullet that grazed the side of Daisy’s knee, and the cold concrete around them. Her kiss draws him in, he falls forward all around her, one hand pressed up against the wall, one closed around Daisy’s hip. It’s like some kind of out-of-the-body experience. Someone is kissing the Director, someone is kissing Daisy, but that cannot be him. It’s just not possible.

It’s strange, because of course, how can it not be strange, kissing Daisy. Stranger still that Coulson likes it. Surprised because in his mind being in love with Daisy has been disconnected with the idea of kissing Daisy (of Daisy kissing him), of holding her between his arms like this (of Daisy pulling him into her arms like this). It’s a good surprise.

Suddenly Daisy pulls away, gently, like she just remembered this is not the time and definitely not the place. Coulson is happily embarrassed about the heat in his cheeks when she lets him go. Daisy gives him a conciliatory smirk.

“It would probably be _very bad_ if the extraction team caught me making out with a subordinate in the middle of a mission,” she says.

The way she says “very bad” does things to him, something Coulson would have been alarmed at, once upon a time.

“Yeah,” he agrees, though rather reluctantly (the fact that Daisy is hurt and probably in pain the only thing stopping him from letting out a frustrated groan). He brushes his nose against Daisy’s, the shock of the intimacy much bigger than he had imagined.

“Make a date in my bunk later tonight?” she asks. Coulson’s eyes wide a little. He is still trying to play catch up. “Sorry, I’m used to take the initiative.”

“I don’t mind.” he tells her. “I don’t mind at all.”

He hears himself say those words, and it really feels like he’s out of his own body for a moment. _But I’d made a resolution_ he wants to protest. This wasn’t supposed to matter. Then again, Daisy has always had a way of messing all his plans.

+++

This is new.

A date for Coulson normally means some high end restaurant and good wine, a night out in town. His dates normally don’t involve something like looking at the messy inside of Daisy’s small room in the base.

Coulson wonders if this is even a date, since they are just carefully peeling clothes off Daisy’s body while they exchange nervous kisses. Coulson feels ridiculously unconcerned by breaking his own tradition. He feels her gaze on the back of his neck as he bends to get her out of her socks (he still has some vague idea of being romantic here).

He’s not entirely clueless — he has always known Daisy loved him. Not _like this_ , not this kind of love. That he didn’t know. But something equally intense. It had always shamed Coulson a bit, because of how unearned it felt. That he had always loved her back never seemed to change that.

He kisses her stomach first, rolling her top above her ribcage, drawn by an unconscious memory of almost having lost her years ago, another gunshot wound, back when she was a new miracle in Coulson’s life and he could never imagine he’d be doing this some day. Daisy arches-shivers against the touch, instinctively following his gesture.

“All good?” he asks, moving his hand over her injury.

“Good, good,” Daisy nods. “Inhumans heal faster,” she says, grabbing Coulson’s hand and bringing it toward her belt. “That finally comes in handy, uh?”

Hearing her voice like this, low and private, inside her bunk, makes Coulson feel like he would like very much to examine what Daisy meant when she said he had _always_ been the man of her dreams. He gets shy about asking, just yet, so instead he focuses on helping Daisy out of her pants as carefully as his hurried, loving hands can muster.

The new bandage looks sturdy and Daisy doesn’t seem in need of kid gloves here. Coulson is happy to obey, running his hands over her naked legs with a solid touch.

He notices a scar on the inside of her thigh, high, above the bandage. Old. Not SHIELD-age, that’s for sure. Coulson doesn’t remember seeing it before. Then why should he? But then he remembers her in a dress — no, not the pink one she wore on the fateful day she met Ian Quinn, but the red one she wore on her first day working for SHIELD, before they flew out to Peru. The dresses must have been too long, after all. The things he notices now… That is not entirely fair: he has always noticed Daisy, everything. It’s only recently he had started _noticing_.

And he wants to tell her all about that — he has the nagging feeling Daisy would like to hear about this ridiculous, new thing happening to him.

“All good on your end?” she asks. Coulson gives her a questioning look. “I mean because technically I’m your boss, you’re under me. Just making sure there’s no pressure going on.”

He shakes his head. “All good,” he says. Then, very purposely he pulls her underwear down, bringing his face close to her hip. “And right now, you are _under_ me.”

She chuckles at his terrible attempt at dirty talk.

This is also new. He wouldn’t normally jump into bed with someone straight up. He normally needs to be wooed for a while first. Then again, Daisy had been unwittingly wooing him for years.

She reaches her hand down and touches the top of Coulson’s head, playing with his hair a little.

“I’m glad I wasn’t imagining things,” she says in a soft, low voice. Almost like she is talking to herself. “That I didn’t imagine the way you were looking at me these past few weeks… It gave me hope for the first time.”

Oh, Coulson thinks. So he hadn’t been as stealthy about all this as he had thought.

He sighs against the top of her leg. Daisy props herself on her elbow, to take a better look at his face.

“Don’t you mind that…?” Coulson asks, sensing that he has to, before everything becomes definitive and unfixable. He believed what she said (and did) back on the mission, when she kissed him, but there are other things he needs to clear up.

Daisy tilts her head towards her right shoulder, confused when he doesn’t finish the question.

“What?”

Coulson gestures to himself.

“That I’m…” he trails off.

Daisy frowns.

“You’re _not_ gonna say old,” she says, accusatory. Then, reading his face: “You are, oh god.”

“You’re very kind but…” even as he says that, protesting against his good luck, he still dips his head to kiss the curve of her hip.

“No, I’m not,” Daisy says, her touch falling from his hair to his temple. “I get what you’re coming from but — some of the people who have hurt me the most in my life have been my age. And you are the person I know would never hurt me. I’d rather have that than young.” She makes an embarrassed sound. “If you still want me to have you.”

Coulson nods, struck by her logic. 

“I do,” he says. “I want you to have me.”

She smiles (no, it’s almost a smirk) - like she really wasn’t sure.

Coulson wants to show her how much… how much she didn’t have to worry about that. Maybe she should worry about everything else between them, but not about Coulson not wanting her.

He does try to show her, bluffing his way to whatever doubts he has left, slipping his hand under her ass and drawing Daisy towards him, his kisses dropping from the inside of her thigh, his tongue pressing into her. Daisy pushes against his mouth easily, wet, her rushing against him, as if she had been waiting a long time for Coulson. Was I completely oblivious? he wonders. He tries to make it up to her, twisting his tongue inside her. That raises a very pleasing involuntary reaction from her.

“Crap, are you trying to get a raise too, agent?” Daisy says.

Her enthusiasm helps soothe Coulson’s nervousness. He didn’t use to be so nervous. Is that a Daisy thing? Or a general his life has been through so many changes in the last few years thing? And is there really a difference between the two?

Daisy melts under his tongue, sighing happily, content. Not a sound Coulson normally associates with the woman, and that is such a shame. It’s good, he just wishes her bed was a bit bigger, a bit easier to maneuver in, and he makes a mental note to make sure Daisy gets the traditional Phil Coulson treatment — he still wants to _date_ date her.

It all happens as fast as falling for her happened slowly.

Coulson trades his tongue for fingers, climbing up the bed. While Daisy makes an audible complaint at the few seconds of non-contact she seems okay to accept the change once Coulson’s index starts teasing her. He wants to be kissing her when she comes, that’s the rationale. He lies on his side on her bed, not wanting to put all his weight on her leg on account of her injury and Daisy grabs him by the shoulder, hugging him, pulling him towards her with surprising greed. He almost wishes this wasn’t happening so fast — in a way he wishes he had realized he had fallen for Daisy ages ago. 

“Oh damn, that's good,” she says, panting, reaching to kiss his cheek, slippery on sweat, landing on his ear instead.

Right after she comes she uses both her arms to pull Coulson even closer, moving her mouth down to his lips, seemingly unconcerned he still takes like her.

Daisy says something into his mouth. The first word gets muffled by the kissing, Coulson doesn’t catch it, then he hears the next couple. “...love you.”

He pulls back, watching her face in amazement right after her voice dies down.

Like he said, Phil Coulson doesn’t do unrequited love.


End file.
